Passenger pigeon wiki8/22/2023 ![]() ![]() They had some iridescent feathers on their necks that looked, depending on how the light shone on it,bright bronze, violet or golden-green.įemales were smaller, between 380 to 400 mm long. Males were 390 to 410 mm long and had were bluish grey with grey wings. Eggs were white and oval-shaped.Īdults weighed between 260 and 340 grammes. It is thought that only one egg was laid at a time. However, in the Summer, they ate berries and fruit, like grapes and cherries. In Autumn, Winter and Spring, they ate beechnuts, acorns and chestnuts. They were very fast and could fly at 100 km/h (62 mph). When the rest of the flock landed, the hunters could then catch them in nets.Behaviour Speed All of the other passenger pigeons would see the “stool pigeon” descending and think it was safe to land. That’s because hunters would take a passenger pigeon (one that had been bound and blinded) to a stool, then drop it to the ground. ![]() One of the interesting facts about passenger pigeons is that the hunting of these birds led to the creation of the word “stool pigeon,” a word that is often used to describe someone who is a police informer. ![]() Each of these nesting females would nest one egg at a time, which is unusual as most birds usually nest several eggs at a time. In fact, one naturalist estimated that a thousand mile area of Wisconsin forest accommodated approximately 100 million birds. In the thick forests of the United States and Canada, millions of these birds would nest. This pigeon’s name was Martha and a memorial is currently set up at the zoo in her honor. They were hunted so heavily, the last one died in a Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. While Native Americans did occasionally eat passenger pigeons, most of the heavy hunting was done by colonists to the New World. However, this changed quickly due to deforestation destroying their nesting grounds and the massive hunting of these birds for food. Another observer in Kentucky noted that when a flock of Passenger Pigeons flew overhead it blocked out the sun for 3 days. They were so numerous at one time, that in 1605, Samuel de Champlain reported “countless numbers” and Cotton Mather wrote in the 18 th century that he saw a flock that was a mile wide and took hours to pass. Passenger Pigeons lived from Ontario, Quebec over to Nova Scotia and south all the way to Texas and Florida. It must have been an impressive sight-seeing millions or billions of these birds flying at high speeds overhead. That’s as fast as a hare or a gazelle runs. These birds could fly as fast as 60 miles per hour. One thing you can’t tell from pictures of this bird, however, was just how fast it was. The males were mainly gray, with bronze feathers on the neck and darker spots on the wings and they were about 16.5 inches tall the females were more of a brownish gray color with cinnamon-rose covered breast feathers and were an inch shorter, coming in at just 15.5 inches tall. Passenger Pigeon pictures often show these birds as they once were. It is probably one of the largest extinctions caused by mankind. However, deforestation and massive hunting reduced their numbers from the billions all the way to extinction in only a few years. At one point in time, billions of these birds lived and flew over North America. The Passenger Pigeon – also known as Ectopistes migratorius – is an extinct bird which was endemic to North America. ![]()
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